Wet play area to be built at Aotea La­goon

A $500,000 wet play area will be con­structed at Aotea La­goon be­fore next sum­mer.

The project was in­cluded in Porirua City Coun­cil’s Long-Term Plan. Some Porirua chil­dren were con­sulted on it dur­ing the last school hol­i­days.

Their feed­back in­di­cated the de­sire for year­round wa­ter play op­por­tu­ni­ties at Aotea La­goon.

Porirua mayor Nick Leggett said the wet play area had gen­er­ated some op­po­si­tion, but he was con­fi­dent the right de­ci­sion had been made.

‘‘The chil­dren have asked that it be built at Aotea La­goon, so that’s where we will build it,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s great that as a city we can work with, and de­liver, some­thing for our younger cit­i­zens. I was im­pressed by their thought­ful feed­back.’’

Coun­cil of­fi­cers have pin­pointed the duck pond as an ideal lo­ca­tion for the play area, but a de­sign process would need to con­firm that, coun­cil parks man­ager Olivia Dovey said.

‘‘The duck pond has not been a suc­cess [due to cost, smell and wa­ter qual­ity is­sues] and it makes sense to use this shel­tered and valu­able site,’’ she said.

The coun­cil would look into grants and spon­sor­ship to off­set the cost, Dovey said.